On this episode of The Historians Podcast, Ashley Hopkins-Benton recounts the life of sculptor and stone worker Henry DiSpirito, who became artist in residence at Utica College. Hopkins-Benton is author of Breathing Life Into Stone: The Sculpture of Henry DiSpirito. She is also a senior historian and curator of social history at the New York State Museum in Albany. [Read more…] about Utica Sculptor Henry DiSpirito
Arts
Upstate Historians Shine Light On A Noted Black Architect
The Greece Historical Society (GHS) is the recipient of two grants totaling $30,000 to fund a Cultural Resource Survey of the architecture of noted Rochester African American architect Thomas W. Boyde, Jr.
The grants were awarded by the Preservation League of New York State and their program partners at the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and the Rochester Area Community Foundation. [Read more…] about Upstate Historians Shine Light On A Noted Black Architect
Preservation League Excellence Award Winners 2020
The Preservation League of NYS has announced this year’s Excellence in Historic Preservation Award winners. The Excellence in Historic Preservation Awards recognize notable achievements in historic preservation throughout New York State. [Read more…] about Preservation League Excellence Award Winners 2020
The Odd Couple Who Paved the Way for Modern Broadway
The early history of the city of New York’s vaunted theater district provides yet another illustration of how oft-repeated narratives become accepted truths. On the website of the New York Preservation Archive Project, we find the following:
“The Broadway Theater District originated in the early 1900s as theaters began to move from Union Square and Madison Square Garden further uptown to the Times Square area because of its cheaper real estate.” [Read more…] about The Odd Couple Who Paved the Way for Modern Broadway
Concrete, Plywood and Soviet Spies
In fiction, poetry or song, houses are treated as living organisms. They are noble, respectable, or infamous. There are houses of high rank and those of low repute – houses have human characteristics and their individual biographies.
The Isokon Building in Hampstead tells a striking tale of recent historical events. At the time of completion, it was one of the few modernist dwellings in London’s cityscape; the block of flats housed a number of notable refugees from Nazi Germany; almost simultaneously it served as a recruitment office for Soviet spies. Crucial aspects of post-war American cultural and political developments originated in a few flats in this leafy corner of North West London. [Read more…] about Concrete, Plywood and Soviet Spies
Poetry: Explication
Explication
Adelaide Crapsey, poet near to death
and tubercular, wrote: “I’ll not
be patient. I will not lie still.”
Strained — her tight, short blasts of breath.
Outside her window headstones dot
her imaged landscape all must fill
one day, abruptly and forever, patient,
lying as still as microbiology
will allow. Mission means “sent.”
Do we have one? Are we? Ask the sill
of Adelaide’s thin window on eternity.
It glosses by transparency
the point between a breath
and no breath, where redundancy
ends, yet we become it — Death
as she bore Sweet Christ, all our beds are made.
Insults, Brawls and Uncounted Ballots: Elections in Federalist New York
The Albany Institute of History & Art has announced “Personal Insults, Street Brawls, and Uncounted Ballots: Electoral Politics in Federalist New York” an online program set for Thursday, November 19th. [Read more…] about Insults, Brawls and Uncounted Ballots: Elections in Federalist New York
North Country Books Closing After 55 Years
North Country Books, a Utica publisher and major wholesaler and distributor of books throughout Upstate New York and Northern New England, is expected to close by the end of the year according to company owner Rob Igoe Jr.
The firm is a victim of COVID-19 Pandemic Igoe told the New York Almanack, but noted that times have been tough since their biggest clients, Borders and Walden Books, closed in 2011. [Read more…] about North Country Books Closing After 55 Years
Adirondack Regional Theatre Goes Virtual with ‘God Of Carnage’
Adirondack Regional Theatre is set to stream Yasmina Reza’s dark comedy “God Of Carnage” from November 20-22. [Read more…] about Adirondack Regional Theatre Goes Virtual with ‘God Of Carnage’
Poetry: Encounter on Beaver River
Encounter on Beaver River
Unimpressed,
he sipped easily
from the surface
until we both gazed
at the same cattail.
It was perfect and simple,
the way a child forgets
the definition of rainbows.